Weekly Photo Challenge: More Hands
Still on an arty theme, I love the smooth skin on this sculpture’s oversized hands. I vaguely recognise the artist’s style but I’m afraid can’t put a name to this work, which was on display at the Lisbon Art Fair in 2011. If anyone can help me out with the artist’s name, please let me know.
It’s over there!
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For other people’s interpretations of this week’s photo challenge, click here.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Unfocussed, Again
After posting my first set of photos for this week’s photo challenge, ‘Unfocussed’, I remembered this shot. I hadn’t planned it at all and was surprised, and pleased, by the blurred effect created by this passer-by as he walks past Lisbon’s iconic Chiado café, ‘A Brasileira’.
If you’d like to see other people’s interpretation of this week’s Photo Challenge, ‘Unfocussed’, follow the links in the comments here.
For more of my posts about Lisbon, click here.
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Iberian masks parading through Lisbon
The last thing I expected to see in the grid of shopping streets in Lisbon’s Baixa district was a couple of men in hessian suits wearing blood red devil masks. They weren’t alone, either. A very odd couple with distorted, bubble gum pink papier maché faces danced past me and the other bemused onlookers to the beat of the drums of a marching band.
As the booming and banging of the drums began to fade away, jangling and clanging of bells became louder and louder as the people who were wearing them around their waists came into view. I can honestly say I’ve never seen more ridiculous costumes; as if the white bobbly tights, and white skirts with rows of fluffy pom poms weren’t silly enough, the hats depicting an Iberian animal took the biscuit.
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Once it seemed that the flow of bizarre costumes and masks had dried up, what else could we do but follow them, like the Pied Piper, to find out what they were up to. Praça do Comércio was teeming with colour and sound as groups of people, mainly from north and central Portugal mixed with a smattering from Spain, gathered at the end of the procession.
The reason? A festival to celebrate and show off the wonderfully weird masks from around Iberia. Apparently, the festival lasts for several days, with traditional dance displays and regional food, arts and crafts on offer. And why not?
The street parade was certainly an unexpected highlight of our trip to Lisbon. If you can get there this weekend, you could be in for a similar treat. The stalls and stages will be set up in Rossio square from 10th to 13th May and the full procession will brighten the streets of the Baixa from 16.30 on 12th May. Have fun, and don’t forget your camera!
If you can understand Portuguese, here’s a link to the programme for the 2012 Iberian Mask Festival.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Arranged
I’m not sure how much longer this classic glove shop in Lisbon’s Chiado area will be able to remain open as I find it difficult to imagine there’s much demand for custom-made leather gloves these days. I’ve never been through the doors but I always pause to admire these carefully arranged gloves, relics of past fashions. The tiny shop has been open since 1925 so next time I’m in Lisbon I’m going to try and get there during opening hours to find out what’s inside before it’s too late.
If you’d like to see my other Weekly Photo Challenge interpretations, click here.
To see what other people have done with this week’s theme, ‘Arranged’, follow the links in the comments here.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Through
It was difficult to choose which photo to use for ‘through’. So I picked three and decided to let you vote for your favourite.
1. A view of the splendid monument to Dom José in Lisbon’s Praça do Comércio through the archway on Rua Augusta.
2. Still in Lisbon, Mike walks through a piece of Jesús Soto’s kinesthetic art at a temporary exhibition in Museu do Chiado.
3. Beautiful coloured light bathes these church pews as the sun shines through the stained glass windows of the 16th century Igreja Nossa Senhora da Graça in Évora.
Decide which one you like best and vote for it by leaving me a comment.
For my previous interpretations of the Weekly Photo Challenge, click here.
For other people’s versions of ‘Unusual’, follow the links in the comments section of the Weekly Photo Challenge.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Even More Unusual
I’ve already posted one photo for this week’s challenge but then I remembered this and couldn’t resist posting it.
A ceramic dog in a dressing gown with a gun – it doesn’t get much more unusual than that! I found this figure in the window of Fabrica Sant’ Anna ceramics shop in the Chiado district of Lisbon which has been selling the company’s hand made tiles and pottery since 1741.
For my previous interpretations of the Weekly Photo Challenge, click here.
For other people’s versions of ‘Unusual’, follow the links in the comments section of the Weekly Photo Challenge.
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Calling on all Lisbon lovers for advice
Yesterday, I received a request from Kelly at Gogobot to help Rachel Slough find things to do and see on a surprise 4-day trip to Lisbon. She’s travelling around, taking up recommendations from local people and others in the know and making making a travel documentary based on her experience.
Sounds like fun, I thought, so why not help her out?
I’ve already added some suggestions to her Trip Plan for Lisbon, and picked up a few ideas from other users for next time I go there.
She’s interested in beaches, places to eat and fun / interesting activities. If you can think of anywhere she should fit into her trip, why not let her know via Gogobot or leave me a comment and I’ll do it for you.
She’ll be in Lisbon from today, 7th March, until Saturday, 10th March.
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Lisbon, what’s not to love about it?
I just found this video on Facebook and liked it so much I thought I’d share it here to brighten up your day and make you want to visit Lisbon. The music is brilliant, too.
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BTL International Tourism Exhibition 2012
I get up in the dark, which confuses the dog and alerts her to the fact that something unusual is happening. I’m heading down to Lisbon for the day. Not for shopping or sightseeing, but to see what’s what at the travel fair that’s on at the Park of Nations.
The first couple of days are for trade professionals and press but from Friday evening until Sunday, the public will be able to meander around the hundreds of stands to find information and inspiration for future holidays in Portugal and further afield.
The Brazil stand, BTL 2012
I’m here in my capacity as a travel writer, having quickly made up some business cards and made hasty arrangements to fit this trip into my work schedule. I’ve managed to get in as Press, but I don’t feel confident that I deserve that accolade until I meet up with Ana Rita Fernandes from Visit Portugal and Paulo Gomes from Turismo de Portugal who are very enthusiastic about my blog.
Since one of the main reasons I decided to come here was to make contact with people in real life, instead of just Twitter and Facebook, their positive response has made it worthwhile. Next year, they’re hoping to arrange a meet-up for travel bloggers so we’ll be able to put more faces to online identities.
During the course of the day, I meet some fascinating people with inspirational stories about their projects and products. One of the more unusual but interesting set ups is Aldeia da Pedralva, a village in the Algarve where the houses have been largely bought up by a group of friends and renovated with the aim of maintaining the character and style of the original village. This isn’t a place for beach bums; holidaymakers are encouraged to pick and mix from a range of activities such as bee-keeping, photography and birdwatching trips or book a specific weekly programme such as trekking. It’s on my wish list now.
I’m also keeping my fingers crossed for start-up company Mygon who launch their last minute deals app in Lisbon in April. If they can build up a big enough base of clients and users, people will be able to turn up in a city and literally find out what’s on offer when they get there.
Heading into Pavilion 1, I can see that this is where the main action is. Four women in long frilly dresses and elaborate flowery hats pose for photos by the Madeira stand.
Lovely ladies from Madeira
A live band is belting out something that sounds a bit ‘Elvisy’. I feel sorry for the girls who are shuffling around trying to make geology more interesting by dressing as a brightly coloured fossils and rock formations, but their tactics are enough to get me over to the Arouça Geopark stand and find out more.
The Serra da Estrella stand is manned by very helpful young men who ply me with brochures and easily convince me to go to Seia, their home town. I’m still not sure how high the bread museum is on my list of things to do but the scenery alone is enough to entice me.
There’s also a strong Jewish community in the Serra da Estrela region which now produces its own Kosher wines, cheeses and jams, all of which I sample and enjoy.
Kosher cheese and bread
That’s when I realise that there’s lots of other food and drink on offer so I sniff out some other delicacies. I narrowly miss out on the pig belly stew on the Douro stand because they’ve run out of clean plates. To be honest, I’m rather relieved!
Pig belly stew from the Douro stand, BTL 2012
Off I trot to something far more appealing; cinnamon liquer, served as a ‘canelaparinha’ (with crushed ice and limes). Yum.
Cinnamon liqueur
I need something a bit more substantial to eat before drinking any more so I head to the snack bars between the pavillions and wrestle with an enormous sandwich loaded with gooey Serra da Estrella cheese and slivers of presunto.
Ham and cheese sanwiches, Portuguese style
Tasty though it is, when a woman sits down opposite me and slices into a rather boring looking cake that starts oozing with coffee coloured liquid, I can’t resist trying one. It’s a pudim de ovos moles (egg yolk cream pudding) traditionally made in the convents but now produced by Tortas de Azeitão who have a mouth watering display of cakes.
Pudim de ovos moles
Having regained my strength, I continue roaming the stalls and loading myself up with brochures, maps and information. I just wish I’d brought my little suitcase on wheels to lug all the brochures around. It’s worth the aching arms and shoulders, though. I’ve picked up information that can take ages to find or isn’t always available online and doesn’t necessarily print well, such as city maps. Now all I’ve got to do is decide where to go first. My wish list of places to go in Portugal has suddenly got a lot longer!
For more information about opening hours, location and prices, visit the BTL information pages of FIL.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Ready
This photo, taken in Portugal’s capital city in November, seems to me doubly representative of ‘ready’. This Lisbon tram is ready to take its passengers up one of the city’s seven hills. Below it, these street vendors have got chestnuts ready and waiting to sell to passers-by.
For more photographic interpretations of ‘Ready’, visit the Weekly Photo Challenge and follow the links in the comments.
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Creativity and Festivities in Lisbon
Thanks to the imagination and resourcefulness of local artists, architects and designers, Lisbon has an intriguing array of Christmas decorations to brighten up the festive season, despite a lack of cash.
Having long been a fan of Portuguese street art, I was delighted to see colourful balls of umbrellas mounted on scaffolding as my taxi passed through Praça do Chile. Going back for a closer look, I found the statue of Fernão de Magalhães smothered in blues, purples, yellows, browns and pictures of puppies fluttering in the breeze.
Captivating enough in the daylight, it was only after dark, when these umbrellas become flashing globes of many colours, that I realised they were part of Lisbon’s Christmas decoration project.
With Portugal under enormous financial pressure, the Museum of Fashion and Design launched a competition challenging artists to provide Christmas spirit on the cheap. Seven of the best entries are now illuminating strategic points around the city centre, having saved the council a massive €750,000 on its traditional lighting bill.
By 11.30, there was a steady flow of revellers making their way towards the river and Praça do Comercio. Just before the archway to the square, people stopped to pose for photographs within the snake of red plastic tree-shaped lights, another of the innovative Christmas decorations.
At the waterfront, the crowd gathered in the darkness, eager for midnight. Without a central clock to provide a countdown, premature pops of champagne corks and celebratory cheers began springing up at random until the mass decided it was 2012.
Seconds later, muffled bangs sounded across the river and the firework display began. Sparkling flowers burst into the night sky and bathed the river in a peach and green glow. Other, shorter-lived but spectacular firework displays went off at other points along the river.
Behind me, a group of people sang Happy Birthday in a language I didn’t recognise. The birthday girl blew out her ’30′ candle before a renewed round of hugs and kisses.
Fireworks over, the crowd turned towards the city centre, spreading through the streets like treacle as people went in search of parties or beds.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Celebration
Although I missed the party this year, the decorations were still adding colour to the streets of Alfama in Lisbon when I visited in August.
Despite the crumbling buildings, the residents of this ancient neighbourhood still know how to celebrate in style and have managed to pretty up their streets in honour of Saint Anthony.
Next June, I want to be there in person to join in the fun.
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An Arty Weekend in Lisbon
You know how sometimes, the thing you’ve been looking forward to proves to be a bit of a let down but it leads to other, better things? Well that’s what happened with the 2011 contemporary art fair in Lisbon last weekend. Don’t get me wrong, it was worth a visit but it didn’t end up being the highlight of my trip.
40 galleries from around Portugal and other countries set up camp for the weekend in the International Fair space at the Park of Nations complex, built for Expo 1998. From the hype, and the €8 ticket, I’d been expecting the exhibition to be bigger but instead found everything crammed into just one pavilion. Not necessarily a problem for those galleries or artists who managed to get an outside wall to themselves but many pieces got overlooked in corridors that were overcrowded with paintings and people.
By the time I visited on Sunday afternoon, many of the better pieces already had ‘sold’ stickers by them. It was no surprise that this detailed reflection of a street through the polished paintwork and rear lights of a parked car by Alexandre Cabrita had been snapped up.
More countrified scenes that appealed to me were of children playing near a stream by Isabel Sabino and a magical forest by Maria Ortega Estepa.
I kept going back to gaze at the shiny blues, reds and browns of Nuno Gil’s creation which reminded me in some way of Hiroshige’s waves and rock formations.
The crafty side of me was inspired by the 3D images made from coloured cardboard hearts. I’m definitely going to have a go at making something similar. However, much as I admire this alternative use for oven gloves, I’ll be keeping mine in the kitchen.
Although the art fair had been the reason for coming to Lisbon, as I mentioned earlier, it wasn’t the best part. Frustratingly, most museums and public art galleries are closed on Mondays in Portugal but now that banks have started putting on exhibitions, there are other options for Monday culture seekers.
The BES bank at Praça Marquês do Pombal is currently displaying ‘Apparitions’, a collection of mainly black and white photographs by Gérard Castello-Lopes, a French-born photographer who spent most of his life in Portugal and died earlier this year. I’d never heard of him before but was enthralled by his work and his use of light, shadows and reflection as well as some incredible action shots and thoughtful pictures of people.
His photo of a boulder surrounded by frothing waves is printed in four or five different sizes to effectively illustrate how “the dimensions of a piece affect the way it is perceived.” I walked past the smaller image without paying it any attention yet the largest one is bold, arresting and dramatic and stopped me in my tracks, making me notice the other, smaller versions and the message on the wall above them.
For both me and my husband, stumbling across this exhibition more than made up for any disappointment about the art fair. Even better, it was free to get in.
As an added bonus, a later stroll down the Avenida Liberdade led us to a collection of stands showcasing the shortlisted advertisements for the forthcoming Eurobest Awards ceremony in Lisbon. Funny, heart-wrenching and downright clever, they were another unexpected treat.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Family
In Portugal, weekends are still very much family time for most people. Leaving home does not excuse you from Sunday lunch with your parents or in-laws. Restaurants are filled on Sunday afternoons with tables surrounded by three, sometimes four generations of relations.
And in the cities, where most people live in flats, families flock to the park in the late afternoon for a leisurely stroll under the palm trees or an after lunch snooze on a bench.
Last Sunday, my husband and I were walking off lunch in Jardim da Estrela (Star Garden) in Lisbon, a soothing space that’s been enjoyed by families since 1842. I couldn’t resist taking a shot of this grandmother, shoes kicked off, protecting her dozing granddaughter’s face from the sun.
Another multi-generational outing where granddad gets to hold the baby.
A string of balloons marks out the outdoor party territory under the palm trees:
Meanwhile, couples of all ages walk off their lunch:
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Hi, I'm Julie, a British expat living in central Portugal. I blog about my experiences of living in Portugal and travelling around this diverse and beautiful country. Whether you're thinking about moving to Portugal, looking for some out-of-the-ordinary trips within Portugal or just fancy a spot of armchair travelling, read on and enjoy.
